Caring for your roses ensures good results

Press, 28 November 1980, Page 10

Caring for your roses ensures good results

GARDENING

M. Lusty

It is now possible to buy roses at almost any time of the year, although the winter time provides the period when the biggest selection is available.

There are three main differences between buying and planting a rose during the traditional planting season of winter to early spring, and at other times of the year. Freshly available winter stock is leafless and generally bare-rooted. Roses bought at this time have been bagged and are therefore growing in a rooting medium. They are in full leaf and usually are in bud, if not in flower. This most helpful in deciding whether or not the bloom really appeals. Roses respond very well to attention. Given a good rooting medium, feeding of some sort or another, moisture, and control over disease and insects, they will provide a rewarding display of colourful blooms. for several months, in two main flushes.

Drainage must be good. Organic matter is a most desirable addition to any soil in which roses are growing.

In fact, having good soil could well be the most important single factor towards healthy, floriferous roses. Watering, spraying, and feeding may then be of lesser importance but must not be overlooked.

Strong growing roses are much, more capable of overcoming adversities than a weak growing specimen. Hence the benefit of feeding them at two main periods of the year — in late winter just before the bud movement, and again after the first flush of bloom is over. A well balanced fertilise high in potassium but also containing the other essential elements of nitrogen and phosphorus, is most desirable. It is possible to buy specially mixed preparations for this purpose. These are balanced granular mixtures known as compound fertilisers, or to make up something to suit. Liquid fertilisers can also be applied to advantage.

Roses are averse to drying out. particularly as the buds begin to develop. Reaction to a lack of water varies with the soil and situation.

Those growing in exposed, sandy locations are likely to show stress more quickly and acutely than those growing in a sheltered position and heavier soil.

Thorough watering in the late afternoon or at night is the ideal time as it allows the moisture to fully penetrata the soil and any water on the leaves to dry up. This avoids possible sun scorch.

Roses are susceptible to several pests and diseases, some of which can be debilitating and most persistent once they have become established. A number of rose cultivars are also more susceptible to disease than others.

In spite of the general lack of immunity to such problems among roses it is still possible to find a few rose beds which somehow seem to have minimal afflictions of this nature without any form of control — as yet the reason has not become apparent generally spraying is, unfortunately, almost a necessity if good health is to be maintained. Most of the older, seasonal rose sprays are based on mixtures of captan, sulphur, maldison and carbaryl. In the last year or two a new product has become generally available which is of sys-

temic nature. It is absorbed in the sap stream of the plant and protects from within. Shield is a mxiture of triforine and orthena; the former controls all the major fungus diseases of roses, such as black spot, powdery mildew and rust, while the latter controls insects such as aphids, leaf roller and caterpillars. To complete the basic cultural requirements of your- roses don’t forget to remove all the spent flower heads as soon after the blooms have faded as possible. When cutting off these old heads prune back to a leaf junction, preferably to an outward pointing one. Do not leave stubs, which is too commonly done, because this invites dieback. In deheading floribundas the whole flower truss must be removed.